It's the 8th of November in NZ. That means Clothing Issue. This is where they give us all of the cold weather gear we'll need to survive at the pole. Or at least so we hope. This was at 1:00 local time so I had some time to kill before then.

I went out for breakfast at one of the local breakfast diners in the area. While I was there I saw a guy wearing an IceCube T-shirt and naturally assumed he was one of "us." It turns out he was actually working for another project, but had one of the shirts apparently as as exchange item of some sort. In any case, we struck up a conversation and he eventually invited me to tour a local acquarium with his group.

It turns out that one of his group is a marine biologist. If you've never had a chance to go some place with interesting flora and fauna in the presence of a biologist, you should find a way to do so. They seem to have an amazing repository of knowledge dealing in obscure facts about things you see every day. It's also possible that they are extremely talented BSers. How could you tell? In any case, we got a great commentary about the various critters in the acquarium.

We also saw a kiwi. That part of the tour was pretty neat. They only let small groups in. No phones, no cameras, and "shut-up" are the rules. The little room is dark, but we ended up getting a pretty good view of the bird. Think of a cross between an ostrich, an anteater, and a porcupine standing about a foot tall. I guess Oz doesn't have a monopoly on weird critters.

After the tour I headed pretty much straight to the clothing distribution center (CDC). There we got a couple bags packed with gear. As a newb, I tried on all the gear. They give you a form to fill out with guesses as to size and base the first round of clothing on that. It mostly fit, but there were a few things that needed to be exchanged. It took about an hour, all told. At this point, my bags are pretty much packed and ready to go.

Our flight leaves tomorrow at 10:00am local time. Our check-in time is 7:00am. Watching the video, it looks remarkably similar to a commercial flight. The only thing to be careful of is that your checked luggage is put on pallets and boxed up. In the event of a boomerang ("Hey look, we took off but the weather is too crappy to land, so let's go home") you will get one bag back. The rest stay on the pallet for the next three days or so. Choose carefully.

The flight itself is a C17 transport plane. Basically, it's a big military cargo plane. This one is going to be pretty full of people as the Friday flight was canceled due to mechanical problems. My understanding is that the planes are reasonably comfortable, but very loud. We shall see. I have my earplugs.

At this point, the machine is in motion and it's a logistics exercise. Tomorrow's flight is to McMurdo station. If all goes well, we spend a night there and then fly to the South Pole station. In practice, you are lucky if there is only one night in McMurdo. The weather usually holds you an extra day or two. That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. McMurdo is where the life and activity is. There may be some chance of seeing penguins or other interesting costal areas.
Once you hit the pole, it's white and bright. Always. Until winter ...